18th & Union Welcomes Audiences Back With Stories and Comedy

18th & Union has announced a soft re-opening. Celebrated storytellers Scot Augustson, Kelleen Conway Blanchard, and Bret Fetzer will perform to an invited private audience. And then, somewhat beloved comedian Emmett Montgomery will perform live with tickets available to all. Live streaming tickets are also available for both productions.

Animal Sinners and Animal Saints

Fri-Sat, July 16-17 @ 7pm & Sat July 16 @ 3pm

Witty, eccentric Seattle storytellers Scot Augustson, Kelleen Conway Blanchard, and Bret Fetzer combine for an evening of strange and delightful tales about animals-saints, sinners, and the moral spectrum in-between.

Scot Augustson tells the second installment of his Lives of the Animal Saints series:

St. Inky of the Poor, Martyred Monkey, in which a young primate leaves the jungle for

the big city and becomes a divine champion of the downtrodden. Scot Augustson is an award losing playwright whose dogged persistence in the arts continues to baffle observers. He is the creator of the shadow puppet troupe Sgt Rigsby & His Amazing Silhouettes and the writer of the cult classic Penguins, which ran as serial late night show at Annex Theatre for several years. Scot has also been responsible for the Christmas shenanigans at Cafe Nordo these past few years. Just to confuse people Augustson has taken up textile art and is now dabbling in Outsider Quilting. To pay the rent he answers the phone at a natural history museum.

Kelleen Conway Blanchard takes a swan dive into the mystery, terror, and heartache that haunt the monsters of the Pacific Northwest with Who is ManFish? What horrors are his to hold fast? What other mysterious creatures swim just outside our periphery? Kelleen Conway Blanchard is a writer with a penchant for the creepy and monstrous side of humanity. Her work has been produced at Annex Theatre, Pony World, Seattle Playwright's Collective, the 14/48 Festival, FringeACT and many others. Her 2012 femme-sploitation women's prison takeoff Kittens in a Cage received rave reviews and spawned an acclaimed webseries. Her well-received gothic comedy Blood Countess premiered at Annex as did her surreal horror comedy, The Neverborn. Check out her Radio Plays online at Annex and her work as part of the Ugly Radio on Spotify. She has been nominated for Gregory awards four times. Blanchard is constantly generating new work that prominently features strong women and lurid circumstances.

Bret Fetzer tells two fairy tales: The Dowsing Rod, about a handsome man of wealth and fame seeking someone who will love him purely for himself...but a scheming cat may sabotage his hopes; and a brand new tale, The Grandmother Underground, about a young orphan girl rescued by an enchanted mole with a taste for the orphan's tears. Bret Fetzer has been writing and telling fairy tales for over 25 years; he is currently writing American fairy tales, set in world half Appalachian, half Dust Bowl, with the goal of writing a story for every state in the U.S. Fetzer is also a playwright both praised (Planet Janet, The Story of the Bull, The Changeling) and panned (the Seattle PostIntelligencer said his play Mars is a star who defies observation was "not only about torture, it is torture"), as well as a filmmaker (his film of Seattle performer Matt Smith's My Last Year with the Nuns is available through Amazon Prime). He was the artistic director of Annex Theatre for 7 years and the producer of the late night variety show Spin the Bottle for 17 years.

Sugar Plum Gary: Christmas in July

Thursday July 22 @ 7pm

Friday July 23 @ 7pm and 9pm

Saturday July 24 @ 7pm and 9pm

Sunday July 25 @ 3pm

Red footie pajama clad Sugar Plum Gary, a "santanist" who has been possessed by the Christmas spirit and is shaped by award winning and somewhat beloved comedian and storyteller Emmett Montgomery, returns to 18th & Union for a special July version of a beloved Seattle Holiday tradition with a weekend of interactive evenings in front of a live audience to remind us that no matter what the year brings or the calendar says the terrifying cosmic wonder of Christmas is everywhere and Santa is always watching.

Choose from two types of tickets for Sugar Plum Gary:

Live Stream - Watch the show from the comfort of your home. You'll be able to submit questions for Gary over live chat. Gary won't be able to see you, but Santa will. He's always watching, even when it's hot.

In Person - The theatre is offering a limited number of tickets to watch and be with Gary in person. It's early days for live audiences of course, and we're all figuring it out together, so here are some rules we all have to follow:

• All in-person audience members must be fully vaccinated.* We won't ask for proof, but we will ask you to verify that all members of your group have been vaccinated when you arrive at the theater.

• Face coverings are optional for audience members.

• There will be absolutely no late seating.

• If you purchase a ticket to watch the show in person and change your mind, no matter the reason, we'll exchange your ticket so you can watch on the live stream.

A person is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 two weeks after they have received the second dose in a two-dose series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) or two weeks after they have received a single-dose vaccine (Johnson and Johnson/Janssen).